Bard is always the first thing I play in D&D crpgs that let me. It’s a great class that lets you do a little bit of everything. Plus it’s great to do a face-melting lute solo as the last thing you do before ending your turn, since Performance is a free action.
No, dude. It is D&D. It’s set in Forgotten Realms, follows the actual lore and uses the actual mechanics of the pen and paper game for all the dice rolling stuff (barring a few things that need tweaking for the medium and eschewing more meta rules that can only work in a PnP setting).
As a fan of both the original Baldur’s Gate games and D&D in general, I have found BG3 to be the absolute pinnacle of the D&D CRPG subgenre. It lets you do so much more stuff than any other D&D game. I love it. It’s been a while… The last D&D game that did as much as BG3 is doing now was Neverwinter Nights.
I think the only game I have tried that with that worked has been Oblivion and Shivering Isles. Some of them are so old, they don’t have any keys. Like Quake and Doom. But those were put in bundles and with updated engine ports and such a couple years ago on Steam and I got those. Like the entire pre-2016 Doom collection, plus some other games on the original engine for $5 total. Not a bad deal. Some of those games I didn’t actually already own, too, like Strife and Hexen 2. Always wanted Strife, but only had the shareware as a kid. Couldn’t beat that as a kid back then anyway; I only ever got through the entire thing pirating it in my 20’s at a time when it wasn’t able to be purchased anywhere.
I got a ton of games on CD from years past; but I got no disc drive on my computer anymore, so I just pirate them instead of buying them again on Steam or GOG unless they have something new to make it worth buying (like an engine port or new features or whatever).
Right… It’s the audience’s fault and not the show runners who outright refused to follow the books and games leading to the star of the show leaving. 🙄
I remember the first time I cried because of the events of a video game.
Final Fantasy 7. Aerith’s death scene.
Up to that point, you’re given several romance options between her and Tifa and I basically friend-zoned Tifa and was pursuing Aerith. So when Sephiroth murders her out of nowhere, it was like he really murdered my girlfriend. FWIW, the game came out when I was 12 and I was probably 13 or 14 when I actually got to own a copy and play through the whole thing.
The most latest game, tho, that hits hard is Cyberpunk 2077. The overall main plot is just a mashup of cyberpunk films like Johnny Mnemonic, Strange Days, 6th Day, 5th Element, Dredd, etc; but the side stories with the main characters are where the real beauty lies. Shit had me choked up like every time there was a lengthy bit of dialogue. The reason your character is dying might be goofy, but the way they portray someone who knows they are going to die is pretty fucking good. And the unique thing is that it’s you. Your own character, not some other character you’re just meant to empathize with.
Inventory management wasn’t really much of a concern for me in the ones where the key items/puzzle solution items aren’t held in the same container. I could have sworn 4 had that tho. Maybe it’s just the remake that changed it? 🤔 I’m currently playing the remake and it’s been putting key items in their own inventory space.
If they had stronger psyches, they would ignore me and just run to the safe room. 😌 They stopped to demand a 1v1 while a hunter pounced them and ripped their guts out.
The only game where I’ve ever actually seen psychological warfare tactics work is L4D’s vs Mode. As a zombie, waiting to spawn, talking shit to the survivors to make them stop moving and type responses to slow them down. 😈